struggling to watch video clips on netbook ?

pennymakespounds

recently gone from a 17 inch dell laptop to a medion akoya E1210 netbook which is very beneficial as far as using when traveling around

My t mob dongle often gets me 7mbps around the country compared with only 1mbps that i get at home on desktop and previous dell laptop

Problem i have is watching things like you tube and other video clips ...even though getting far stronger speed ... either don't load at all or loads of "bufferring" and maybe are showing/ stopping every 10 or 15 seconds .

What causes this problem ? ... is it something to do with spec of notebook ?
thanks

davester

Most Netbooks are not powerful enough, They have slow CPU's and very weak graphics cards so just can't cope.

savemoney

If you watched gadget show this week was mentioned by Martin netbooks only good for word-processing and a few minor tasks

PS gadget show repeats on Saturday on channel 5

pennymakespounds

put me on the right track then please .. what's the "terminology" of the spec that i need to look for so it's not a problem for me ? . what is it i'm looking for so they work well ?

Can any netbook do it right ?... if not any suggestions on a laptop .. light as poss .. cheap as poss .. that will do it right .. along with normal surfing stuff.

BargainGalore

Have you tried playing files with vlc player it tend to be a great player with slow machines

It doesn't require any codecs

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

sorry that solution only for video not web siteslike youtube

pennymakespounds

bargain galore.... once downloaded .. how do i use it ? .. what do i do ?

thanks

totalsolutions

Get the latest video drivers. Samsung NC20 does ok.

KingL

pennymakespounds wrote: »

Problem i have is watching things like you tube and other video clips ...even though getting far stronger speed ... either don't load at all or loads of "bufferring" and maybe are showing/ stopping every 10 or 15 seconds .

What causes this problem ? ... is it something to do with spec of notebook ?
thanks

If streaming video is stuttering it's either that the data isn't reaching your machine fast enough or that your machine doesn't have the oomph to process the data to display moving video in real-time.

It sounds like your network connection is good and fast, but you can check that this isn't where the problem is by starting to play a YouTube file, pausing it as soon as it stops playing, going away and making a cup of tea while all the data gets buffered (downloaded) onto your machine, then coming back and unpausing it. If it still stutters, that tends to suggest that it's a problem local to your machine and not on the internet connection or YouTube servers.

(Also you can trying downloading the video as a stand-alone file (.flv) and playing it using the vlc player mentioned above, which is another (slightly more fiddly) way of doing the same diagnostic test.)

If it still jitters, then it is likely your machine, but you can double-check this by pulling up the task manager. Depending on what operating system you have - you will probably get to the task manager by pressing the Cntl Alt and Del keys all at the same time. When you get the task manager up, click on the tab at the top labelled 'performance' and then play the video again. If the the chart shows the line going right up to the top of the scale and staying there - that's a pretty conclusive sign that it's the spec of your computer that's the problem.

If that does turn out to be the case, there isn't much you can do except maybe upgrade the RAM. From a quick google, it looks like your machine is a rebadged
msi wind and it comes with 1GB RAM (memory) as standard. Apparently it is possible to upgrade this to 2GB. The extra memory should cost about £20. Whether it would be enough to cure the problem I can't say.

The other consideration is how much memory are your other applications using. Windows Vista Operating system takes up a lot of memory. XP and Windows 7 will use less, so you might consider changing your operating system (but obviously this will cost money). Similarly, Windows Internet Explorer 8 browser software takes up a lot of memory. You could consider switching to a slimmer one such as Mozilla Firefox of Google Chrome (this is free).


Martin certainly said on the Gadget show that netbooks were less suitable for video than the net-tops he was reviewing (which have a separate graphics card) and some of the video he saw was truly dire, but I don't remember him blanket ruling out all netbooks for all video.

Could existing netbook owners please share their experience on how they perform with video. I'm considering getting a NC10 to play avis while out on the road, so I'd like to hear about direct experience.

I have systems at home that on this benchmark chart score 186 (which is OK with smaller video files) and 356 (which is great and can handle anything upto (but not including) HD). I see the standard netbook chip comes in around 300. What are netbook owners' own experiences with the limits of video (filesize, bitrate, resolution, etc).

TIA

uk_messer

I've used my Asus EEEPC1000 for youtube a few times and it's been fine. I have upgraded it to 2gb memory though, so maybe that has made a difference.

BargainGalore

Its a very good media player but its only good for media on your netbook not for internet like you tube

Once installed when you got the media on your netbook just select with right mouse open with vlc player if it doesn't do it automatically

It could well be your ram as others have said you wont expect amazing result with a netbook like full HD but it should play some youtube files

pennymakespounds wrote: »

bargain galore.... once downloaded .. how do i use it ? .. what do i do ?

thanks

Jaffa.

YouTube lagging can be due to the large amount of people at peak times. I should imagine with a USB dongle your signal is going up and down all the time, limiting your bandwidth so that might be adding to the amount of buffering.

I don't think it's just the Atom, I think it's a number of factors, I guess thats all part of the experience of mobile computing.